The summer is here and I haven't done nearly as much hiking and biking as I've wanted to. My lack of outdoor activity is due to having so much going on otherwise, such as weekday trips to the city to visit friends, last-minute concerts, lunches, weekend drives to the mountains, clubbing, and Mike. I'm not disappointed to see my outdoor meditation adventures slip to the side. I've let my social life slack for a long time and at one point Scott turned and said to me, "You know, developing your social life is just as important as improving your professional life." I hadn't ever thought about it, but I think he's right.

The weekends pass in blurs of color and smells and tastes and sounds, and I have to pause for a moment whenever anyone invites me to some omnium-gatherum or bedizened soirée, running through the calendar in my head to ensure I don't have any prior plans. It's fun, yet exhausting, this life-scaled room-working. And I can work a room, let me tell you. But part of me longs for those quiet evenings in the warm fields of solitude and I have to look no further than this journal to realize that life is a cycle and I will doubtless be there again. The key is to enjoy what moment you're being offered now.

Rick came over for lunch this afternoon and I made noodles. He's trapped in a marriage with children and has only recently come to terms with being gay. All I can do is be there as an understanding ear. I could never be empathetic because I can't can't imagine myself in his situation, but part of me wonders if it's because I don't want to imagine it. Am I simply afraid to deal with it? His face is like an open floodgate and it's hard to believe that he could manage any sort of bold-faced lie without the truth flooding through his water-blue eyes. His story makes me feel fortunate to be where I am.

I have to work the part-time job tonight and I'm dreading it. This frustration always wells up when I realize my evening hours have been sequestered, although it quickly vanishes once I actually get there. The job isn't difficult, and I do enjoy interacting with the people. Had my evening been planned like any other free evening this week, I'd most likely be spending it by going home and putzing around anyway, so the key is to suck it up and get it over with.

No situation is purely good?beneficial, convenient, what you want?or purely bad?harmful, self-defeating, pointless. Whenever I couldn't make up my mind regarding a difficult decision, my dad would sit me down with a piece of paper and a Bic pen. "Draw a line down the middle," he'd say, and on each side of the paper, I'd scribble out the "pro's" and "con's" in my awkward, childish script. While the column with the most didn't necessarily always win out, it taught me utilitarianism in a way that has seeped under my skin and affected my very ability to let things take their course. Could this be the source of my overanalytic nature that seeks to always find the path towards the greatest good?

In a Chinese shop I bought a Japanese paper parasol which I wear in my hair. So delicately made, with colored paper and fragile bamboo structure. It tore. I repaired it with tape.
      When Samuel Goldberg took us to Chinatown for dinner I went into a shop to ask for parasols. The woman who received me was very agitated: "No, of course I don't carry those. They are Japanese. You bought them in a Chinese shop? Well, that may be, but they're Japanese just the same. Tear it up and throw it away."
      I looked at the parasol in my hand, innocent and delicate, made in a moment of peace, outside of love and hatred, made by some skilled workman like a flower. I could not bring myself to throw it away. I folded it quietly, protectively. I folded up delicacy, peace, skill, humble work, I folded tender gardens, the fragile structure of human dreams. I folded the dream of peace, the frail paper shelter of peace.

--Anaïs Nin, 1943

The weekend was warm and mellow, spotted with a few nights of frenzied activity, running from party to party—two each night, to be exact, and that's not counting the one's I had to decline. It's been a while since I'd socialized that much and I awkwardly dredged up my dusty etiquette hat to meet the occasion suitably dressed. At the end of each night, Mike was next to me and we unwound in each other's arms, a forgotten comfort now deliciously new.

I had thought about cutting things off with him. Ending things with Steve was easy since, after all, he stopped calling after I explained that I wanted something more serious and was going to look elsewhere if he wasn't interested. I worried about their friendship and had decided that the responsible thing would be to end all relations with both, but the tension between Mike and Steve is slowly subsiding and I'm sure they'll reconcile in no time. The connection Mike and I have is also too good to overlook. I want to wait this out and see where things go.

Days of activity seem to flash by, fast-forward, to the moment in which I'm sitting here punching out my thoughts. The afternoon slowed steadily to a trot, and now I look around at the clean apartment, the dishes washing after a dinner with dad, the AC quietly snoring behind the walls, and feel amazingly fulfilled as though everything went as planned. Whether that feeling is due to a physical contentment after a weekend of good food and good sex is still debatable but things certainly feel as though they are falling into place.

This morning, I brewed my first pot of coffee in my new coffee maker and toasted a bagel in my new toaster, both appliances recently purchased on a side trip to the Farberware store while visiting Mike on Wednesday. All of these extraneous appliances that seem to have root in so many lives are pervading my space, appearing as if by magic instead of planning on my part. I own a coffee maker and a toaster oven. I am joining the ranks of my middle-class colleagues.

When I lived at home, I never imagined buying stuff like this?appliances, air fresheners, cleaning supplies, alcohol, window treatments?and, although I'm not one to advocate consumerism as a means to attain any sort of status, it certainly seems to be a barometer of one's living situation. Now, the only isles in the grocery store I have left to explore are feminine hygiene and baby care. Let's hope I don't have to venture into either anytime in the near future.

You can't get the sort of escapism in a day-trip that comes from spending extended periods in the wilderness, the kind of release from life that drops you closer to the earth. What I'd like to discover is some simplified way of returning to that root self where all you need is food, water, and air. The irony is that the simpler you try to make things the more complex they become.

In an attempt at simplicity?no, in an attempt to save face?I've considered cutting myself loose from the sinking triad that has formed between Steve and Mike and I. It's turned into a chess game that I want nothing more than to be free of; free of the heat generated from this stressing friction between them in battle over checkmating me and free of the constant strategizing. At some point in high school, I had learned this lesson and it seems fate is bringing me up to speed with a little refresher course.

It came to me in a moment of clarity in traffic. You know, one of those moments that seems to slow for an instant, the colors intensified around you, and the world reveals itself in all its complexity through something as simple as a cloud or a stop light or a hand gesture, and the only way to describe the feeling that floods your body is "understanding." It was an understanding that everything would be okay, that survival isn't contingent upon this decision, and that all I really need is food, water and air.

Although complexity often arises from an attempt to simplify things, the opposite is true as well: simplicity often finds you in the midst of weaving tapestries in your head, regardless of whether you're in the concrete jungle or the jungles of South America. The escapism that comes with the wilderness is just a perk.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course. -- Lao-tzu

The week has represented a break from the sifting and sieving. I have retreated, in a way, to allow the world its course and let things pass in their own time. The world is beckoning me to play with it, not analyze it.

...I swam back to bed for the end of the night... Putting off as long as I could the desolate waking to life alone—this calamity that is all mine, that will not end till I do.

That sort of dependence upon another person unnerves me and yet another part of me envies and desires that kind of relationship, one that speaks of a higher sense of self, a synergy of two people exploring the world together, learning and experiencing and living together, so much in love they are unable to live without one another. At one point in the book, the author enters the room where his lover is resting and proclaims, "Here I am!" Endearingly, his lover responds: "But we are the same person. When did that happen?"

I had always been under the impression that the ideal relationship would consist of two people who were compatible to the point of sharing a few core interests, yet significantly different as to compliment one another. Happiness is something that is found on your own, not in another person or in a relationship. Monette seems to tragically discount all of this, describing a love that is a necessary, synonymous component to his life, to a man who was "another name for the same person."

Could it be that all of my preconceptions regarding love and commitment between two people are myths collected by my subconscious, designed to make me feel better about my independence (or un-attached-ness)? Perhaps this feeling of need that runs deep to my core is what I should truly be listening to. Hedwig starts up "The Origin of Love" in my head and freshman psych resurfaces with images of Plato's divided souls.

All of this pondering only points in one direction, however: there is no formula for this sort of stuff. As difficult as it has been for me to realize that, considering I'm want to find the easiest solution to any problem, figuring that out has been the easy part. Deciding what actually works for me is another story all together.

I had just finished a short visit with Steve, breaking the news that I had gone out with his roommate the previous evening and that there was some mutual interest, dating-wise. He seemed to take it fairly well?a perception later altered when he called to say he was really rather upset. I was my usual, awkward self at dinner and so when I left I was rather angst-ridden and moody.

On the way home I caught sight of the kids at the exit and, without much thinking, pulled over and asked where they were headed. Perhaps some sort of good deed would perk me up, I thought. A quick once-over and I decided they looked safe enough. They piled into the car and after a few introductions it turned out they attend the local rich-white private college in town, which also seemed to ease the unfamiliarity of new acquaintances since?while I'm not exactly white and far from rich?I do drive a nice car, wear second-hand clothing, and was raised in the same area of town, therefore sharing a lot of the same vocabulary and world views, as it soon became apparent.

We chatted for the first half of the ride, and listened to some of my mix CDs for the rest as they complimented me on my music taste and I congratulated myself on my good Samaritanship. Thanking me as they got out of the car, I said not to worry about it, adding that I'm sure I'll need a ride at some point in the future.

It brought me back to the idea that meaning in life is derived from human interaction. Everything else seems sort of extraneous to relations between yourself and other people. Applying that tentative theory to my current situation with Steve, I decided that whatever happens I should act accordingly with my feelings for him. That would be easier if I didn't have to listen to him add that clause at the end of every compliment he gives me ("You're [insert random compliment], but I'm just not in a place where I want to [insert committal activity]").

If I envision myself as a traveler on the speedway of human interaction, it would be easiest to hitchhike and wear my heart on my sleeve or perhaps a sandwich board of allegiances, letting people pick me up, rather than navigating it myself and playing the whole dating strip-tease of getting to know someone. Of course, easy isn't always the best policy. While often I find myself becoming jaded in regards to dating, I remind myself that anything worth having takes hard work.

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